From Five Foot Two (2017) starring Lady Gaga to BlackPink’s Light Up the Sky (2020) and Billie Eilish’s The World’s A Little Blurry (2021), documentaries on female pop stars have been released in increasing numbers since the early 2010s. Many of the world’s most famous female artists - Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, MIA, Pink, JLo, Mary J Blige, Tina Turner and Shania Twain, amongst others - have allowed fragments of their onstage and offstage lives to be filmed and released for public consumption as part of the bolstering of their brand. Unlike earlier examples of the form which were often much ‘softer’ in their depiction of difficulties of the working life of the artist, like Dolly Parton’s Here I am (2019) and Beyonce’s Life Is But A Dream (2013), more recent films have provided deeper insight into the relentless scrutiny of famous women’s bodies, the ensuing mental health tolls, fear of cancel culture and observations on the illusion of female power in the music industry.Interrogating Female Pop Star Documentaries examines the female-oriented pop star documentary (pop doc), starting from its inception in 1991 with In Bed with Madonna. Paying particular attention to the complexities of the construction of celebrity femininities, bodily aesthetics and gendered disciplinary norms as portrayed through the form, the collected scholars demonstrate the shift to the pop star's use of documentary as a means to exert narrative control over the restrictive nature of the music industry and their treatment by the mainstream and social media. The collection offers a pathway to engage with how the pop doc focused on female pop stars creates, reconciles and perpetuates the realities and myths of their lived experiences and legacies both on and off stage.
